Twelve days of Christmas, plus a doz.

In the spirit of a season cheerful, hopeful and optimistic , Happy Christmas.

• I hope you celebrate the dearest, most precious gift above all things, good health.

• May your best memories come home to center stage with a musical medley – laughter, gratitude. story telling and this grand reality: “I am an American.”

Humbly then, here are a few baubles …

1. Happiest Christmas of his life? Steve Spurrier, retired coach at South Carolina? Or, Bo Ryan, retired coach at Wisconsin?

Maybe both, but neither can be more special than …

2. Richie Farmer. When President Barack Obama commuted sentences of 95 federal prisoners last week and pardoned two more, it brought to mind our one-time high school basketball hero and player at Kentucky. Richie Farmer was released last Friday .

Forgiveness, second chances, a clean slate … America, I love this place.

3. Linda Ellerbee. Among finest journalists in half century and a career-long hero of mine, retired at 71 December 15. Her last Nick News for kids on Nickelodeon, was Ellerbee-appropriate titled, “Hello, I Must Be Going.”

I discovered Ellerbee in the 1970s on NBC’s Weekend, then Overnight with co-anchor Lloyd Dobyns. Using author Kurt Vonnegut’s original, Ellerbee wrote a best seller in 1986 titled And So it Goes.

Her style was keen on fairness, candor and honesty.

Linda Ellerbee, best of the best, merry Christmas.

4. Shannon Dawson. “No hard feelings” departure from University of Kentucky, was soothed by a stream of Christmas checks from Mitch Barnhart – $550,000-a-year (that’s $4,583-a-month) through 2018. Until or if Dawson takes a new job.

5. Patrick Towles. New slate, new town, new league, all new people. The very best to Boston College’s newest quarterback candidate.

6. Skal Labissiere. For a skinny 19-year-old (turns 20 March 18) leave big money and glam talk to agents and rating services , and embrace: “It’s the journey, not the destination. In realm of Time there are no guarantees . Joy is in this moment, not a time-line to the finish.”

7. Eddie Gran. Job jump from Cincinnati to Lexington? Reportedly replacement for Shannon Dawson at Kentucky, has a resume` to sell tickets at Commonwealth – “up-tempo and pass-heavy offense.”

8. UK basketball traditionalists and One-and-Done compromisers, a bit of Christmas unity: “We don’t know what we have until we’ve lost it, but it’s also true we don’t know what we’ve been missing until we have it.”

9. Gift. For Louisville basketball fans, “soon after Missouri KC and Utah Valley … some hoops worthy of devotion and dollars spent to watch. ”

10. Gift. Louisville at Kentucky. For fans across the Commonwealth and beyond, Cardinals and Wildcats at the brink of showing a national television audience (CBS) what constitutes a rivalry.

11. Tubby Smith. Wasn’t there discussion back there about running up a banner at Rupp Arena to celebrate one of the finest ball coaches in school history?

12. Worth Repeating. The man who dares to waste one hour of his life has not discovered the value of it. – Charles Darwin

13. Mark Stoops. Enlightenment to make a creative hire or two that works for a change.

14. Mike Krzyzewski. A mirror. With words Sold Out at the bottom.

15. Antidote please for that sinking feeling when ESPN analyst introduction time comes and its Dick Vitale.

16. Gift. Get Duke out of Durham, Carolina out of Chapel Hill and Dick Vitale on a flight to Minot, North Dakota, and college hoops on Saturday would be fun.

17. Tom Izzo. IS a Christmas gift for college purists.

18. Dan Dakich, ESPN. Another rung up the ladder of ‘ Opinionators ‘ who antagonize homers and delights the rest of us.

19. Darrin Horn. If there were an award in college hoops for Landing-on-your-Feet decision – making, the perfect candidate is the first-year assistant coach at Texas.

20. Gift. Matt Bush, No. 1 pick in 2004 baseball draft, walked out of prison the other day into a million-dollar minimum contract with the Texas Rangers. Served three-and-half years for a drunken driving accident in Florida.

21. Dan Shaughnessy, Merry Christmas. Boston Globe columnist laid a little tough love on readers, before John Calipari was fawned over at UMass. “What an embarrassment for our state university. You’d think our UMass officials would have as much good sense as the president of the University of Memphis, who canceled a Cal celebration after initially thinking it would be a good idea to honor “college basketball’s all-time bag man.”

22. Reaction of Kentucky fans -in-denial? Demonize the messenger. Shaughnessy “ must be a hater .”

23. Dream. If you’re like me at Christmas time, missing a friend or pal so much that you’d like to lift him or her out of a dream and hug ‘em to make up for all the times you didn’t, Merry Christmas.

And …

24. “When Christmas bells are swinging above fields of snow we hear sweet voices ringing from lands long ago. Etched upon vacant places are half-forgotten faces of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

And so it goes.

Merry Christmas.

You can reach me at bob.Watkins24@aol.com